On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Kudlow,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said that “there was a hope that we could weaken the regime enough for the Iranian people to rise up, but they pretty well slaughtered the leaders of the opposition.” And Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz “And so, President Trump’s, I think, just dealing with that reality.” And Iran shouldn’t be given unfettered access to money from oil sales and sanctions relief.
Johnson said, “I think it recognizes the reality. And, again, it’s a reality that I’m sure President Trump doesn’t like, I don’t like it, but you ignore reality here at your own peril. So, it recognizes that Iran started this war 47 years ago, that they’ve been digging in for 47 years, that, if they obtained a nuclear weapon, it would be an existential threat to America, which is why President Trump made the tough decision to take out their nuclear capability or certainly degrade it, their navy, a lot of their missile activity, much — a lot of their drones. But it also recognized the reality that Americans certainly don’t want American sons and daughters’ boots on the ground there trying to uproot the ayatollahs. Certainly, there was a hope that we could weaken the regime enough for the Iranian people to rise up, but they pretty well slaughtered the leaders of the opposition. They’re incredibly brutal, they’ve got the guns, tens of millions of Iranians don’t. And so, that’s the basic reality.”
He continued, “They closed the Strait of Hormuz. That’s awful for the world economy, for the American economy. And so, President Trump’s, I think, just dealing with that reality. My biggest concern is if we allow them to sell oil and have them unfettered — give them unfettered access to the cash, the revenue generated by the sanctions relief and the oil, I hope that doesn’t happen, I hope the Treasury Department maintains control, and sure, let them use that money to rebuild what’s been destroyed, that’s fine, for the benefit of the Iranian people. But don’t let them use that money to fund their proxies and their wars in the Middle East.”
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